This Poll Is as Important as a Trump Trial
Tomorrow marks the 3rd anniversary of Trump’s attack on the Capitol. People have used the opportunity to revisit their conspiracy theories about things that Merrick Garland didn’t do, all of which ignore the overt steps taken against Trump’s co-conspirators in 2021s.
Hopefully, I’ll complete a post on options Jack Smith would have if DC Circuit Judge Karen Henderson finds a way and the will to continue to delay Trump’s trial after Tuesday’s hearing on his Absolute Immunity claim.
For now, though, I want to argue that this poll, showing that an outright majority of Americans (still) believe a series of things that equate to January 6 being an attack on democracy. For example, 56% of all US adults think Trump is guilty of conspiring to steal the election.
After three years of concerted propaganda effort, thin majorities still believe:
- January 6ers were “mostly violent” (50%)
- Punishments for Jan6ers have been fair or not harsh enough (73%)
- Trump bears responsibility for January 6 (53%)
- DOJ is treating Trump like anyone else (57%)
- Trump telling his mob to march to the Capitol threatened democracy (51%)
- The mob entering the Capitol threatened democracy (58%)
- Congress voting against certifying the election threatened democracy (53%)
- The attack on the Capitol should never be forgotten (55%)
- There is no solid evidence of widespread voter fraud (63%)
Only on whether Trump’s role disqualifies him for the presidency (or Republican members of Congress who voted to disqualify votes) did less than a majority vote for democracy (46%).
These aren’t great numbers — and they have slipped over time.
But there are about 7% of Republicans who recognize that Trump was in the wrong. Most independents agree with Democratic views on January 6, not Republicans.
The propaganda is working … but thus far it hasn’t won.
If 7% of Republicans reject Trump’s party of fascism, it could swing the election.
Trying and convicting Donald Trump for his January 6 crimes is necessary, but not sufficient, to reverse the tide of fascism in the United States. Just as important is defeating the Republicans who empowered Trump’s fascism, to punish them for doing his bidding for the last three years. Just as important is affirming the importance of democracy, is ensuring that Americans choose to protect democracy. A Trump trial should help convince swing voters; indeed, prosecutors plan to tie Trump directly to the violence that Republicans reject here.
But that effort must go hand-in-hand with defending democracy, defending the process of trying and prosecuting January 6ers, crime scene and not.
And that’s a political fight that everyone can engage. That’s a political discussion about what it takes to preserve democracy.
President Biden Remarks on the January 6 Capitol Attack
President Biden delivered remarks in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania marking the third anniversary of the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Now:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?532680-1/president-biden-remarks-january-6-capitol-attack&live
Aaron Rupar is live- tweeting:
https://nitter.net/atrupar/status/1743369308497904081
Jan 5, 2024 · 8:30 PM UTC
This
“Trying and convicting Donald Trump for his January 6 crimes is necessary, but not sufficient, to reverse the tide of fascism in the United States. Just as important is defeating the Republicans who empowered Trump’s fascism, to punish them for doing his bidding for the last three years. Just as important is affirming the importance of democracy, is ensuring that Americans choose to protect democracy. A Trump trial should help convince swing voters; indeed, prosecutors plan to tie Trump directly to the violence that Republicans reject here.”
Affirming the rule of law has moral, political and electoral consequences.
Defeating the tide of fascism, for which Trump is the current standard bearer (but by no means the only beneficiary or proponent) is undoubtedly a political project, but it is a project for which reassertion of the rule of law as an intrinsic component of democracy, is an essential element.
Thank you for all your work, and advancing this cause.
Must-see trumpaganda: ‘God Made Trump” video he posted today.
Is that Mike Johnson narrating?
Biden’s at Valley Forge now. He was at the Memorial Arch earlier, where deranged MAGAs met every Sunday in Nov. 2020 to cry and rage and pray for their orange jesus. I live near there so I went there and laughed at them. One of them was the MAGA county commissioner Joe Gale, a 30-something single man who still lives with his parents and who accomplished absolutely nothing during his 8 years as minority commissioner except to spread lies about Trump and covid.
“ Must-see trumpaganda: ‘God Made Trump” video he posted today.”
It’s so over the top, I have to wonder if it might be a spoof that everyone will fall for.
Pop quiz:
Today in Iowa Trump said “It’s horrible but we need to get over it.”
What was he referring to?
a) his 2020 election loss
b) Iowa school shooting
Considering who said it, it was (b) the school shooting.
JFC.
I need a macro that will just insert the phrase, “Imagine the response from Republican politicians and voters if Biden said the same thing.”
I agree with the thought, but I’d suggest adding that to all text processing applications, so it happens without requiring any action from us, because it would be a shame to miss a chance to point that out …
I am clinging to the hope that the DC case goes to trial before the election. I sadly believe it’s our only chance to avert a second Trump presidency. And it’s no sure thing, even if it happens.
Have faith in the American people. We can’t succumb to Trump-think by expecting him to prevail.
I don’t, really.
I spent the first 30 years of my life under an undemocratic government: 4 states in the deep South.
Nobody — or hardly anybody — seemed to care. Even my father, whom I greatly esteemed and not least for his going into the military in 1940 because he wanted to oppose Nazis by force, did not bother to vote until 1968, when I was able to cast my first vote and cajoled him to vote also.
I estimate that 40% of Americans are natural fascists. The reason we didn’t get a fuehrer until 2016 is that even fascists have standards. All previous possibilities were not bad enough.
Well thanks for that inspiring opinion. Why are you here blowing up this blog’s comments if you have zero faith in the American people? You could shit post somewhere else like on the dead bird app and find people sympathetic to your bullshit.
Because I live in hope. Because maybe the United States can qualify as en emerging democracy. Because perhaps there is enough residue from the mostly eviscerated Voting Rights Acts combined with enough non-white voters to prove me wrong.
I doubt I have the clout to blow up the blog.
You’re not living in hope when you say you have no faith. Your multiple comments within 15-20 minutes at several hundred words a pop containing only your opinion derail moderators’ and readers’ time so yeah, you’re blowing up the blog with a DDoS of comments.
Now move along.
What the hell is a “natural fascist” for dog’s sake??!!! The folks that voted for FDR were decidedly NOT fascist and certainly NOT “natural” fascists, their politics was informed by their experience and their experience of the economy and the military (remembering the Bonus March) did not make them prone to vote that way…quite the contrary!
A person raised to want to be led. In the United States, that includes — potentially — anyone raised in an evangelical or Catholic church — around 2 in 3. Not all are good religionists, so the net number of naturals is less.
I think 2 in 5. An Australian socioogist thoight 1 in 3.
In any case, quite a lot.
As for those who voted for FDR, 1) a lot of his followers were desperate for a leader; and 2) in 1935 he was reported to be seriously concerned that they would desert him for Long.
Younger adults are less likely to be in lockstep with a church. We should be more concerned about what replaces church in younger peoples’ lives if they have a bent toward authoritarianism.
I think part of the message President Biden and others should repeat again and again is what did our soldiers fight and die for?
— so that we can have a dictator?
— so that authoritarianism or fascism could reign?
— so that a minority could rule over the rest of us?
— etc. (add your own)
Is that really what they fought for?
“Is that really what they fought for?”
No!! But the collective memory of the mass of folks alive doesn’t include all the “wars” of the 20th century when we had a “civilian” manned, drafted army! Our memory only goes as far as the Iraq “war”.
I don’t think the fighting troops in 1942-5 thought they were dying to see the triumph of fascism around the world, but that is pretty much what they got: Spain, Portugal, Cuba, Dominican Republic . . . and many others.
I just finished reading Robert Conquest’s 2005 book — The Dragons of Expectation — on what he calls our law-and-liberty society, and it is astonishing that he could with a straight face write that US policy toward the rest of the world was focused on ‘peace and democracy.’
Of course, he was blinded by having soaked in the evils of Stalinism for over 50 years,
but that cannot explain, eg, the status the Kissinger enjoyed from with our political class.
No sir!! My grandfather in WWI and my father in WWII both earned Purple Hearts and my father the Bronze Star and I am here to tell you neither of ‘em were fighting for capitalism. And if we hadn’t had a draft we’d still be in Vietnam.
And the draft was the reason I was in Vietnam and the reason I came to be decidedly NOT fascist!
As with most political polls I see there is always a sliver of dems that appear to side with Trump. Who are those 5% over the last eight years? One in 20.
I’ll gander that it’s also why many polls are so lacking. Yes, I know statistics, margin of error and polling methods but I suspect there’s a margin of liars or incompetence answering these questions.
Liars (organized or not), incompetence and bots. YouGov polls are attempting to filter out the latter two. There are questions now like “[Normal starting of a question]. We are concerned that people are not reading the questions. To show that you’ve actually read this far, please select [specific answer] below.” And “What did you do last weekend?” with most of the answers being either impossible or once-in-a-lifetime events and only one or two common events likely to have been done by everyone.
“…I suspect there’s a margin of liars or incompetence answering these questions.”
Always try to remember that the vast majority of citizens pay less (far less) attention to national politics than you (or I, or anyone else here) do.
For me this is the most important data point:
There is no solid evidence of widespread voter fraud (63%)
I don’t claim to understand stats, but to me this looks like only 37% of those polled believe there was solid evidence of widespread voter fraud. After all the propaganda spewing from the right that election fraud is rampant, the voters aren’t buying into it.
The biggest threat to our democracy is people not voting. If the majority of voters still believe elections are being run fairly, then they will probably continue to vote. This is cause for hope.
While that 63% may be cause for hope, the 87% of Trump voters in the poll who view him as having only some or no responsibility for the events on Jan.6 indicate that the threat to democracy is also from people that do vote. For that 87% trial results against Trump are unlikely to change their vote. Hopefully the political discussions about what it takes to preserve democracy and the trial publicity do motivate the non-voters that will matter.
I think the art and science of polling is in grave danger. I will no longer answer random phone or email polls. I cannot verify who the people asking the questions actually are, and given the savageness with which the dark side attacks non-believers, I have no interest in exposing my opinions to strangers.
I know this is bad for the good guys, but unfortunately self preservation has to come first.
Younger generations do not answer the phone for calls from people they don’t know. Unfortunately, my cell number is out and about due to work, so I do get random calls.
I think this is why so much of polling quality is suspect now. I do not know how this is going to be rectified, so much of a political campaign is dependent on good polling.
Do campaigns use public polling? Somewhere I got the impression that they paid for their own polling that was not just random phone calls.
I often see stories that reference campaigns quoting private polls. My recollection is that public polls may not target the voters you want to understand, and/or be conducted in a helpful timeframe (there are states that go months between state-wide polls, for various reasons).
If you honestly don’t know what a poll will show, and you pay for a private poll, you don’t have to share the results with anyone else, especially if the poll shows weaknesses that you don’t want other campaigns to know about.
If a public poll arrives with GREAT NEWS, of course you can reference that, because everyone has heard about it.
Does that make sense?
RE: If you honestly don’t know what a poll will show, and you pay for a private poll, you don’t have to share the results with anyone else, especially if the poll shows weaknesses that you don’t want other campaigns to know about.
Reminded me of this episode:
ON AUGUST 2, 2016, PAUL MANAFORT GAVE KONSTANTIN KILIMNIK 75 PAGES OF RECENT, DETAILED POLLING DATA
https://www.emptywheel.net/2019/02/25/on-august-2-2016-paul-manafort-gave-konstantin-kilimnik-75-pages-of-recent-detailed-polling-data/
And given the targeted disinformation that followed from Russia’s IRA, especially in Michigan and Wisconsin, that subterfuge on Manafort’s part may have made the difference in 2016.
That and the hapless egotist Comey.
For a national campaign, I don’t see the usefulness in a general “who would you vote for” poll even if it was accurate. Since the election is not based on popular vote, for all the money that goes into a campaign, one would at a minimum want polls taken at a county level. At least in competitive states. I’ve wondered why this detail is so often overlooked by media discussions of national or even state polls.
The proliferation of push polls-as-fundraising tactic further denigrates “the art and science of polling”, imho.
I get several per day, including from the bombastic “James Carville here, Clare”.
DSCC does this, too.
All ‘if-thens’ lead to a donation, or in my case, to a “block this caller”.
Side note: For reasons unknown, I now get several texts/day from Nikki Haley.
I can only hope that ActBlue has not sold my name to her.
If there’s one thing which earns an automatic email filter [IF “James Carville” THEN auto-delete]…that. Ditto DSCC.
Haley has likely purchased social media data which may identify you as having more in common with her voters than not — like perhaps you shop in the same stores as a concentration of Haley supporters. This is a key reason we don’t sell ads or accrue personal data with formal accounts using logins. Nope, nope, nope. Consider cleaning all your caches on mobile devices and desktop/laptop, change your Google Ad ID if you have a Gmail account, turn off location data if you don’t need it, and remove personalized ad services. Limit use of dedicated apps (ex. Kroger app, Banking app, so on) and use Firefox browser instead.
Good reminders, Rayne. Along these lines IIRC there was post here awhile back (maybe when tweets became xeets?) that included a lot of tech tips.
I don’t want to add work to the ew team, but if in the interest of others, I would love to have a post for basic self-protection methods the community here implements.
A worrisome internet thought woke me the other night and my first thought was, ‘I bet the ew community knows how to fix that!’ Of course that specific fear dissipated but am sure it will return.
Just a wish.
The Free Software Foundation has lots of tips on their websitte.
“These aren’t great numbers — and they have slipped over time.”
But that’s the thing. I feel they should be more lopsided, on the side of democracy, at least a little. The numbers feel too close, like they’re within not merely a margin of error, which is a statistical thing, but the margin of normal, of normality, which only heightens the nightmare. The normalization of what Trump has brought is a grinding and wearing down process. That’s the slippage in the numbers over time. What’s their trajectory between now and election day?
The President and his speech writers agree with Ms. Wheeler.
In his opening speech he referred to George Washington. But in northern states he might refer to Ulysses Grant. In Kansas and in the western states he might turn to Eisenhower and the WWII soldiers.
Thanks to Marcy Wheeler for her timely comments.
Anyone who doesn’t think the US can lose its democracy should reintroduce themselves to the history of the KKK especially after 1915 to see the ideological similarities between that minority and one being faced today.
Google D.C. Stephenson, to go down that rabbit hole.
Or author Timothy Egan, recently interviewed on Oregon Public Broadcasting.
[Thanks for updating your username to meet the 8 letter minimum. I assume that’s what you’ve done by switching from your previous username “Jim Roy.” /~Rayne]
Amen. My grandfather, as a young teen-ager in the late 1870s, fought the night riders with real firearms. He was as racist as they but from the upper stratum of South Carolina society, so opposed to the uncouthness.
Scholars of Dixie society are all agreed that Southerners were ready — even comfortable — in sacrificing economic well-being in favor of feeling superior. (Small d) Democrats ask how people can ignore their economic interests by voting Republican. This betrays a profound misconception of what people want.
Seems to be their superiority was their economic well-being.
They were relatively poor. Pete Daniel in “Breaking the Land: The Transformation of Cotton, Tobacco and Rice Culture since 1880” points out that ‘wealthy’ Southern planters post-Reconstruction were, compared with the prosperous in the rest of the country, barely middle class.
You can count Southern plutocrats on your thumbs.
If a President appoints justices that say he maintains royal privileges after leaving office, does that make him a king? James Madison would have been surprised to learn the Supreme Court could grant royal privileges to any man.
In the previous Constitutional crisis, many men who believed in slavery, or at least believed the states should manage the transition away from slavery, nonetheless did not believe in sacrificing the future of the United States over that dispute. In this situation a different result may follow.
Thanks to Ms. Wheeler for her timely comments.
The President agrees with her.
At what point does one decide that it is time to go? After Trump wins in 2024? After his inauguration? After they start building the re-education camps? After they start rounding up democracy activists?
How many Jewish people would have been spared the Holocaust if they had believed that “yes, it can happen….even here”? My family fled Europe one step ahead of the Germans and Russians to a safe harbor in America they had prepared a few years earlier. They could read what was clearly written on the walls and they believed the totalitarians when they said what they were going to do. And they acted accordingly and survived.
So what will it take for the frogs to realize it is getting hotter?
This is not the first time you have dropped in and made comments which look more like demoralizatsiya insisting Americans should consider leaving the U.S. The last time you did this back in October 2022 you claimed to be in Uruguay, but used a European VPN through a California server — not exactly a profile inspiring trust.
Your bullshit is an expression of gross privilege if it isn’t part of an influence operation. Beat it.
(At the hazard of being accused of Stockholm syndrome) I just wanted to mention that the trial might be more important, that being about fair application of the laws and Bill of Rights, right to counsel, etc, etc.
I agree, timbozone. The poll EW cites gives important if dispiriting insight, but in the end it’s just a poll. A vote cannot be rescinded or rethought–both of which could be significantly influenced by those polled witnessing (or even just knowing about) a trial.
I still have some faith in people rethinking these notions.